Nobody is forsaken by God

Editors' Note: Recently, an article in Time magazine described Africa this way: "Much of continent has turned into a battleground of contending dooms ..." And then the article presents a long list: overpopulation, illiteracy, AIDS, social break-down, drought—and the list goes on from there. In his travels during the last couple of years, contributing editor Warren Bolon has visited some of the countries of West Africa and most recently Zaire. On this week's Sentinel radio broadcast, Associate Editor Russ Gerber talks with him about the current situation in Africa. The following text is from that interview.

Russ Gerber: In your travels to Africa, Warren, have you seen anything more than the devastation and hopelessness that are so often portrayed in news accounts? Is there any basis for us to be hopeful; a point where we can actually help and go forward?

Warren Bolon: Well, I went to Africa looking for God's promise, not looking for the hopelessness. The promise is there to be seen. The hopelessness is overwhelming if one allows oneself to be drawn into it, drawn in by the picture of devastation. But there is no such thing as a Godforsaken land. Because God is infinite and is always present and everywhere present, there really couldn't be anything such as a Godforsaken land or a Godforsaken people. I went to see my fellowman as the coequal expression of God. Also, I went knowing that while I was in Africa, I was as much at home as I am when I am in Quincy, Massachusetts. Real home isn't devastated, forsaken, the prisoner of drought and famine and war. It is actually a retreat.

Through prayer, I recognized that these lands are just as much retreats or "safety places" —places of God's care and abundance—as the places I am familiar with at home. I know that there is poverty and I saw it, but I didn't see poor people—people who were poor in spiritual resources, people who were poor in intelligence, people who were poor in other ways that God endows His child.

Gerber: So, instead of seeing, as you say, Godforsaken land, a Godforsaken people, you went to Zaire to see God-cared-for people and land. This was the basis for your prayer as you traveled. As you entered this area at different times and saw different scenes, were you able to maintain that inspiration?

Bolon: It wasn't without effort. When I travel, regardless of where it is, I pray more constantly, because when I'm away from the familiar, I need to hold to what I understand of God's creation. Often, the human sense of things, what you might call the conventional picture, is quite contrary to that. It's a confusion. It's a picture of human misfortune or ugliness. It's really through prayer that we break through the surface appearance and begin to see something of what God has made and what He maintains. He hasn't made a perfect creation and then abandoned it to forces that are beyond His control. It is His will that all His creation be cared for, that they be supplied, that they be nourished. Prayer allows us to see more of that going on despite the gripping picture of something quite contrary.

Gerber: Is this more like having your head in the clouds while the rest of you is suffering along?

Bolon: No. It's anything but uncaring to turn away from a picture of misfortune or discord or disease and to turn spiritually to what you know is God-made. When I began thinking about my first trip to Africa, I began with a very basic concept that's from the Bible: man made in God's image. From that statement I reasoned that the image, or the likeness, of God can't be unlike God in any respect—that he can't have anything in his nature, in his character, or in his life that's unlike its original, its source. And from that basis we stay, in prayer, with the fact of man's spiritual nature. It's the foundation of that very simple understanding of man as God-created and God-maintained that allows us to free ourselves from the anxiety, the fear, or the fascination with evil and discord in the many forms it takes. This prayer actually lifts thought out of the darkness, and the human scene becomes enlightened with healing and abundance.

Suppose we were sitting in a large open stadium with thousands of people on a starless, moonless night. And imagine one person there in the total darkness with a torch or some kind of bright light. When that person lights it, immediately darkness is displaced. It would be clear to us that the darkness isn't a real entity, but it is merely the absence of light. Sometimes it's important to see that famine or drought, no matter how wide-spread and devastating it is, is really an argument that God is absent, that good is absent, and that man can be abandoned by his creator.

There's a very important role for each one of us regardless of where we are. Whether living in famine or observing it from a distance, we must turn on our "light" through prayer; to care enough to see and understand more of what God is making and creating. In doing so, I really feel that we help to remove the darkness of hopelessness, the notion that man can be Godforsaken.

Gerber; We can do this, anyone can do this, regardless of whatever politics may appear to be controlling things.

Bolon: Yes. In fact, in Zaire, I felt this was very much the case. The people I talked with who were practicing Christians, and in many cases practicing Christian Scientist, were in a situation where they really had no great measure of human freedom. Their government, in a sense, is still poverty-stricken. But they were free to pray. They are free to explore that realm of freedom that God is giving—the understanding that God is Truth and is the only real lawgiver and is constantly giving and enforcing His own laws. Within that land, that consciousness, that understanding of God's presence, man is free. Such a clear realization of God and His creation cannot help but have its effect in human society. People feel freer, and they are able to take actions that lead to freedom.

Gerber: I like that idea of taking actions that lead to freedom. Step by step, people can begin to realize, in their own lives, the truth of these spiritually inspired facts.

Bolon: It's an opportunity to live your gratitude. If you have some sense, some feeling, that God is your Life, that He is the giver of all life, then you have something to be grateful for. To not acknowledge that, to avoid acknowledging it, is to accept a kind of drought. It's to say there's nothing flowing in my life; there's no reason to be thankful. That state of thought is as much a drought as the lack of rain and river water in Africa. Without the flow of care, gratitude, thankfulness, compassion, and willingness to give, there really is no freedom or no immediate deliverance from drought. We have to solve the drought of inspiration in our own lives before we can actually do something to solve the geophysical drought in the world.

Gerber: The thoughts you have shared with us go a long way in helping us do that. Thank you so much, Warren.

Bolon: Thank you, Russ.

If you would like to listen to Christian Science radio programs, you can write for a list of the shortwave frequencies in your area: Letterbox; P.O. Box 58; Boston, MA, U.S.A. 02123.

You can also listen to and purchase cassette tapes of radio programs in most local Christian Science Reading Rooms.